The Quality Initiative</tile> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="description" content="The Quality Initiative"> <meta http-equiv="keywords" content="The,Quality,Initiative"> </head> <body> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="10" height="39"> </td> <td width="99%" height="39"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="16%"><a href="http://inttranews.inttra.net"><img src="http://inttranews.inttra.net/images/inttranews_grey_2.jpg" width="192" height="37" border="0"></a></td> <td width="50%" valign="middle"> <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"><b><font color="#CCCCCC" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">KNOW.<br> HOW.</font></b></font> </p> </td> <td width="34%" align="right" valign="top"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#666666">25-05-2005</font></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="10"> </td> <td width="99%" > <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="100%"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> <b>The Quality Initiative</b></font> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%"> <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Why try to improve the quality of what you do? The first reason, as far as I am concerned, is perhaps what you might call professional pride. Since I have no other option than to work for my living, the only interest lies in doing it to the best of my ability. It makes life more interesting, more of a challenge, lessens the depth of defeat and heightens the sweet taste of each and every victory. The second is more down-to-earth. The translation market is a highly competitive one – and it’s going to heat up –and one of the ways of beating the competition is also by doing things as best you can. The third is equally pragmatic. If you adopt a quality approach, it will quickly be reflected in your work, and your past, present and future customers will note it, and they will come back. <br> <br>The customer is the first and last concern in any quality initiative. You need customers, and they need your skills – but you are probably not the only person or company to offer those skills. So the customer comes first. But what is quality in translation? And how can I ensure my translations are high quality, and consistently so? <br> <br>The basic answer is relatively simple: what the customer wants determines what your quality procedures should entail. And you are far from being the first person to be concerned about the quality of your services. The first quality assurance methods were devised by the aviation industry in WWII, when manufacturing quality was a question of life and death – and some things have not changed in that respect. The quality of some translations can still mean life or death, such as in medical interpretation, and in courts. <br> <br>Once you realise you need to improve that quality of what you do, if only to ensure you get and keep customers, no matter who you are or how old you are, you realise you cannot do it alone. You need training, to save you time and lessen the number of mistakes you can and will make. To set your own standards, you need a standard set by others. <br> <br>The next step involves deciding which standards can be used, and how. Stay tuned… <br> <br>Malcolm Duff <br> <br>(c) HTT. This material may reproduced in part or in full as long as an HTML link to Inttranews is included in the reproduced material. <br> <br>Further reading <br> <br>LISA has published a Best Practices Guide entitled “Quality Assurance - The Client Perspective”, focusing on the steps clients can take to ensure that they are providing their solutions providers with the necessary materials and information to provide quality localizations. It addresses topics such as selecting an appropriate partner, organizing files, checking source material, resolving problems and planning for localization. While the Guide is aimed primarily at neophytes to localization, it contains the distilled insights of some of the best localization managers on the client side of the business and will be useful even to seasoned veterans. <br>It can be downloaded free of charge from the link below: <br><a href="http://www.lisa.org/mediakit " target="blank">www.lisa.org/mediakit </a> <br></font></td> </tr> </table> </td></tr> </table> <script type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="<http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show